V. I.

Lenin

The Campaign for the Elections to the Fourth Duma

I. FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLE

The Cadet Party, which, of all the so-called opposition parties is most
favourably situated because of its legal status, has just taken an
extremely important step by defining its policy in the election
campaign. To judge by the evidence of sources sympathising with the Cadets
and most accessible to us, its policy has been defined as follows:

1. The Cadets will put up their own candidates wherever they are sure
of being elected.

2. Wherever a Cadet candidate cannot expect an absolute majority, the
Cadets will support the progressive candidate likely to obtain the
highest vote, irrespective of his party affiliation.

3. Where an opposition candidate has no chance at all, and there is the
danger of the election of a Black-Hundred candidate, support may be given
to the Octobrist candidate but only on condition that he is a genuine
constitutionalist which, strange as it may seem, they occasionally are.

4. The Cadets will not enter into any election agreements with the
Right Octobrists or with the Nationalists and monarchists. In general,
while not forgetting the interests of the Party, they will not sacrifice to
the latter the supreme interests of the opposition, in the broad sense of
the term.

Such is Cadet policy. Working-class democracy must examine this policy
with the greatest attention, analysing its true class substance and its
real meaning, which are veiled in the usual conventional phrases. These
phrases about “the higher interests of the opposition”, etc., are the first to strike the eye when we read the Cadet resolutions. The fact of
the matter, however, is that the policy of the Cadets has been fully and
finally defined as the policy of a Cadet-Octobrist bloc. This fact
must be understood, it is the grain that must be separated from the chaff
of official liberal catchwords; (1) Not a word about a bloc with the Lefts, with the democrats. (2)
Only blocs with Right Octobrists are forbidden—with the Gololobov group, [3] who are an insignificant minority among the Octobrists. (3)
In practice the phrase about “the higher interests of the opposition in
the broad sense of the term” can only mean one thing: that as a
general rule blocs with the Octobrists are actually permitted (and
recommended!).

These three conclusions regarding the real policy of the
Constitutional-Democratic Party must be firmly borne in mind.

What do they mean? They mean that the “Left Centre” of the bourgeois
liberals has defined its policy as that of a bloc with the Right Centre of
the bourgeois so-called liberals—speaking openly of its hostility to the
Black Hundreds, and expressing its hostility to the Lefts, to the forces of
democracy, by omitting any reference to any blocs with the Trudoviks,
non-party Lefts, and workers’ candidates.

What we said in Zvezda , No. 28, in the article “Two
Centres”, has been fully confirmed. [1]

There are three basic political forces in Russia, and, consequently, three political lines—the Black Hundreds (representing the
class interests of the feudal landowners) and, alongside of and above,
them, the “bureaucracy”; then, the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, the
Left (Cadet) and Right (Octobrist) “Centre”; finally, the bourgeois
democrats (the Trudoviks, Narodniks, non-party Lefts) and proletarian
democracy. That this, and only this is the case, is confirmed by the entire
experience of the first decade of the twentieth century, which was an
extremely important and eventful decade.

It goes without saying that all boundaries in nature and in society are
dynamic; they are not static, but, to a certain extent, conditional and changing. Among the parties and groups standing
“ on the boundary line ” of the main divisions, transitional forms
and fluctuations are inevitable; but the substance of the matter, resulting
from the relations of the class forces in Russia at the beginning of the
twentieth century, is undoubtedly determined by none other than the
indicated “triple” division. The lumping of the bourgeois liberals
(headed by the Cadets) with the bourgeois democrats has caused considerable
harm to the Russian liberation movement, and we must bend every effort to
ensure that the experience of the great decade (1900–10) helps the
democratic movement as a whole to become finally aware that it is a fatal
mistake to lump things together in this fashion. Working-class democracy in
our epoch is, therefore, faced by two inseparably connected tasks: first,
to secure the independent political organisation of the class of
wage-earners, independent of all bosses, big and little, even the most
democratic, and pledging allegiance to the entire international movement of
that class; and, second, to develop and strengthen the forces of Russian
democracy (inevitably head ed by the workers, just as the bourgeois
liberals are inevitably headed by social elements of the Cadet type). The
latter task cannot be fulfilled unless we persistently explain to the
broadest masses the class roots and the political significance of the
difference between bourgeois liberalism (the Cadets) and bourgeois
democracy (the Trudoviks, etc.).

The liberal bourgeoisie does not want to and cannot dispense with the
Markovs and Purishkeviches, whose domination it only strives to
moderate. Bourgeois democracy and the workers can only strive, more or less
consistently and consciously, to destroy all the economic and political
foundations of that domination.

That, from the standpoint of working-class democracy, is the main
content of the campaign in connection with the elections to the Fourth
Duma. It is this content that must be primarily emphasised to counteract
the Cadet policy of deliberately confusing all the cardinal questions of
principle by means of stock phrases about “progressism” and
“opposition”.

The Cadet-Octobrist bloc is nothing new. It was foreseen by Marxists
long ago. They pointed out the inherent class affinity of the two component parts of this bloc as far back as
1905–07. Two possible majorities became defined as soon as the Third Duma
was convened, and by the end of 1907 the Marxists had made this conclusion
the cornerstone of their policy. The five years’ existence of the Third
Duma has confirmed this conclusion. In general outline, the composition of
the Third Duma is as follows: [2]

| |
| --- |
| Rights . . . . . . | 160 | } } |
| Octobrists . . . . . | 124 | } } | 284 — First majority 251 — Second majority |
| Liberals . . . . . . | 127 |
| Democrats . . . . . | 29 |
| Total . . . | 440 |

Throughout its existence the Third Duma relied on these two majorities,
which represent the necessary component parts of the entire system
inaugurated on June 3, 1907. The first majority signifies that the “old”
is to be preserved in power entirely intact; the second majority signifies
“a step toward” a bourgeois monarchy. The first is needed by the June
Third system to preserve the “power and revenue” of the Markovs,
Purishkeviches and Co.; the second is needed to moderate this domination
and to advance in the bourgeois manner (according to the formula; one step
forward, two steps back). Experience has now clearly shown that this kind
of advance is equal to stagnation, and that no progress is being made in
“moderating” Purishkevichism.

Quite a number of votes taken in the Third Duma were decided by the
“second majority”. Recently, Rech definitely admitted this,
stating that “a number of votes.” at the be ginning of the last session
“actually reproduce the domination of a Left Centre” (read of the
Cadet-Octobrist bloc) in the Duma. Such votes are possible only because the
second majority too , like the first, is a bulwark of counter-revolution; to illustrate this we need only recall Vekhi ,
or Karaulov’s pious speeches, or the “London” slogans.

Where are the results of these “victories” of the second majority?
Where Is the proof of the truly marvellous discovery of the Cadet Party
that there are “genuine constitutionalists” among the Octobrists?
Doesn’t this discovery rather show how paltry is the Cadets’ conception of
“genuine constitutionalism”?

The first and fundamental question of the election campaign is its
political content, the ideological line it expresses. The resolution of the
Cadet Party proves once more its anti-democratic nature, for the content of
the Cadets’ election campaign reduces itself to further lowering the
concept “constitutionalism” in the eyes of the masses. Instil into the
minds of the people the idea that there are genuine constitutionalists
among the “Left” Octobrists; that is what the Cadet Party is bent on,
that is the meaning of its election policy.

The task of the democrats is a different one; not to belittle the idea
of constitutionalism, but to explain that as long as power and revenue
remain in the hands of the Markovs and their like it is nothing but a
fiction. The content of the election campaign of the working-class
democrats is determined by the task of bringing out the difference between
liberalism and democracy, of rallying the forces of the latter, and of
closing the ranks of the wage-workers throughout the world.

The resolutions of their conference imply that the Cadets are departing
still further from democracy. Our task is to rally the forces of democracy
to counter every sort of medievalism, and to counter the Cadet-Octobrist
blocs.

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 297–99 of this volume.— Ed

[2]
The calculation is based on the figures supplied by the official
Handbook for 1910 (Issue II). The Rights include: Rights
proper—51, Nationalists—89, Right Octobrists—11, and 50 per cent of
the independents—9. The liberals include: Progressists—39, Cadets—52,
all the nationality groups—27, and 50 per cent of the independents—9. The democrats include 14 Trudoviks and 15
Social-Democrats. — Lenin

[3]
The Gololobov group —supporters of Y. G. Gololobov, one of
the extreme Right-wing members of the Union of October Seventeenth
(Octobrists) in the Third Duma.